A Chance Encounter
by Conduit42
Summary: After the Voice of Survival burns his name to the citizens of Empire City, Cole and Zeke make plans to get out. On the way, Cole can't help but make an attempt to leave the city with a clear conscious and possibly save someone's life. Of course, after hearing his name and 'terrorist' in the same sentence, the civilians won't make his attempt easy.


"This is so crazy…" he whispered as he climbed up the side of a broken neon display to reach the top of a building. He looked down for a moment and shook his head. What he saw was mass of citizens, all dirty and disheveled, looking up at him with what he assumed was intense hatred.

'_Voice of Survival, huh? If I ever see you…' _the bike messenger thought. The so called 'Voice of Survival' is why he and his friend were on the run! And why his girlfriend won't even look at him anymore.

"Leave that girl alone, you monster!" he heard someone call from below him. The group of citizens rose in a cheer at the statement. When he looked down again, he saw a few of them brandishing rocks and baseball bats.

'_Ugh… dammit. I'm trying to help her!' _he thought. He would've said something but he knew no one would've believed him.

'_Just my luck. I can hear my parents shaking their heads. "If you stayed in college, then you wouldn't be climbing up the side of a building like a monkey in the sights of a disapproving crowd. And you definitely wouldn't shoot electricity from your hands. That part especially."' _He stopped climbing and though for a second.

'_Nah… they wouldn't know that much, but still! Somehow, electricity flying from my hands would be __**my fault**__. How is any of this my fault?'_

"It's your fault she's up there! You killed her parents!" he heard a woman's voice shout at him.

"Are you serious? That guy killed her parents?"

"Yeah, and why he's going up there is beyond me!"

"You people, I swear…" he mumbled to himself. Eventually, through the crowd's jeers, he finally reached the top of the neon sign. He looked over to his right while climbing on top and saw his reason for being a few stories off of the ground. A dark-haired girl was on her knees, hunched over something. From the sound of it, she was crying.

'_Just walk over to her, tell a few jokes, give her some candy, make sure we both get to the bottom of this building the safe, boring way, and be on my way to the Stampton Bridge.' _He looked over the side he just climbed on. _'I get the feeling I won't be taking the 'express elevator' today.' _He looked back at the girl.

"Let's get this over with", he said to himself.

Walking slowly to the girl as not to startle her, he noticed how her hair was matted down to her skin as though it were wet. In fact, her skin was glistening in the sun's bright rays. He looked at her suspiciously. Something about this girl was off to him.

"Hey, kid", he asked a couple of feet away from her. She turned to him quickly and stood up too fast for his liking. It turns out, she was a lot closer to the edge than he thought. He held his hands up.

"Hey, hey, hey! Whoa, hold on… I am not here to hurt you. I just want to talk", he said in a as soothing voice as he could make. His voice wasn't what it use to sound like. He could tell it wasn't all that soothing to her.

'_When that damn thing blew up in my hands… it's like it burned my voice or something.'_

"Uh, how you doing, kid?" he tried for conversation. The girl just kept staring at him, like she was waiting for him to do something. Like she was studying him. To him, it was starting to creep him out.

"Y-you're not here to hurt me?" she had finally asked him. It almost hurt his feeling how surprised she was at the fact he was not there to hurt her.

"No, kid, I'm not. I'm just here to get you to come back to ground floor. You know, where it's safer", he said, walking to the edge and looking over. Now, an entire mob of people had gathered, shouting rude things at him. The bike messenger just shook his head.

"There's a child up here! Keep it PG!" he shouted back. He actually heard the girl giggle at that. He looked over and nodded. She looked at him.

"You don't have to worry about me. And I turn ten tomorrow! So I can handle a few bad words."

"Oh really? Well, uh, happy birthday!"

"Thank you, sir. And I've already watched plenty of movies with bad words in them."

He turned to her. "Like…?"

"Have you seen _Assassin's Need_?" she asked him, excitedly.

"Woah… that's a movie with plenty of bad words." He paused. "Don't tell me how it ends. I've been meaning to see myself. Maybe take…" he changed his mind.

"Who?" she asked him.

"No one. I think the one who wanted to see it, well, I think she's a bit mad at me right now."

"I'm sorry to hear that", she replied.

He looked down at his feet and shook his head. "Yeah", he whispered. Then he looked over at the edge and found something odd. He walked over to it and upon further examination he saw that it was a brown doll.

"What's this here?" he asked her. She walked next to him and picked it up. Then she showed it to him proudly.

"This… this is. The. Absolutely. Greatest. Thing. Ever." She said enunciating each word.

"Really? …so what is it?" he asked. She held it out to him and he starting to play around with it. Making it do back-flips, jump off his arm, making it fly around while humming a heroic tune. He felt ridiculous but she laughed and that was enough for him.

"Have you seen that one movie? Um… _Little Big Unit_?" she asked.

"Can't say I have…"

She looked at him, disapprovingly. It was a weird look coming from a kid.

"How could you not hear of _Little Big Unit_? It's like… the most amazing thing ever."

"I thought this thing right here was the most amazing thing ever."

"No, no, no. That is the greatest thing ever. There's a difference."

He titled his head sideways. "So, this little… sack…boy thing is from that movie?"

"Yes! And he has the most awesome powers. He's able to change the world around him as he sees fit. Look!" She reached in her pocket and pulled out a pink-green neon colored line and attached it to her toy.

"With this cord, he's able to pull things from thin air and use them to his advantage. And he's really great at decorating! The same way he could pull out like a jetpack or a trampoline, he can pull out stickers! Stickers!" she said with enthusiasm. It occurred to him that this was no longer the sad little girl he came to save. Now, she was just how any child should've been. Happy, excited over movies that adults would never be bother to see by themselves.

'_Like she's not living in a quarantine zone. Without parents…' _That thought struck him. How did he know she didn't have any parents?

'_One of those pricks down there said so, but…' _he leaned down to her height. She looked at him curiously.

"Why are you up here?

She looked down as though she did something wrong.

"I… I just needed some time away from the other kids. They were being really mean to me."

He felt a chill. "Other kids?" he whispered.

"Yeah, at our new home. Coleridge College", she said with mock enthusiasm. "That's where we all had to go after the policemen cleared out the big kids."

"That old-ass college way in the Warren? …why are you all living there?" he asked, afraid of what was next.

She was quiet for what he thought was a long time. She opened her mouth to speak a few times but no words came out. Finally, she cried out, "Everyone at the college's parents are gone. We're all orphans now."

His heart just dropped. He couldn't process the fact she stated. With everything that's happened to him. Around him. He hasn't stopped running for enough to think _'What happened to all the children?' _Maybe he couldn't bear the guilt that came with the notion. He was so angry at himself he didn't even notice the girl's quiet sobs. He reached over to put a comforting hand on her shoulder but stopped when he saw his hand was glowing with electric energy. He dropped his hand and settled on talking to her.

"Hey, I-I'm sorry. All of this is just too much for them. They're just…"

"They're just idiots…" she mumbled.

"Come on, kid…" he whispered.

"No!" she shouted at him. He was surprised. "They're just idiots! I remember what happened. My parents were killed when that light touched them. They were gone and I wasn't going with them!" More tears. "I don't know why I'm still here… and they're gone. I-I ju-just…" she turned away from him and sobbed quietly.

"It's, uh… gonna be okay. All of this, has to end eventually, you know?"

She fell silent after a while. "I guess…"

"It's really not safe up here for you. Maybe we should head down now?" he asked her. She just nodded.

"You know… you never did tell me your name, sir", she said to him.

"Well, my mom always told me to not give strangers my name."

"But, you're like, really old."

He furrowed his eyebrows. "I'm only 25…"

"Oh… well, I'm Macy", the little girl said. She held her hand out to him, as though to ask for a hand shake. He looked at her, then walked over.

"I'm Cole, Macy. Pleased to meet you." She smiled as he reach out to shake her hand,

And that's when everything went wrong.

As their hands met, Cole's powers went haywire. His body, especially his hand felt weird, like it was buzzing, painful buzzing. Almost as if he was being…

'_Electrocuted…' _he thought as the two of them both flew backwards. Macy went backwards and hit a smoke stack. It broke and smoke went spewing everywhere engulfing her. As the bike messenger flew off the building, the last sounds he heard was that of water splashes getting farther away from him… and the sound of a train coming his way.

"What the hell did you do to her?!" someone below the train terminal shouted at him.

"MacGrath, you monster! Demon!"

Cole didn't care what they called him. All he wanted to know what happened to that little girl on the roof.

The bike messenger narrowly dodged the train's high speed rushing towards him. He considered going back up the building but didn't when the first rock hit him in the face.

"Ow! Damn you, people!" he shouted at them. He jumped on the train reluctantly and was carried away. He shouted at them "I just wanted to help!" More and more rocks came his way. He just backed away from them and moved to the front car of the train.

After a long time of silence, Cole found his friend Zeke and they made their way to the bridge.

"Cole, man! What took you so long?" his friend asked him.

"Don't worry about it", he replied with clenched teeth.

"Cole… is this about what happened with… you know? Trish?" Zeke asked. Cole stopped walking and turned to him. He saw the concern on his face and sighed.

"I just need to get the hell out of here, man. This place is going to drive me insane."

Zeke nodded at that. He didn't look happy about what Cole said, but he let the subject drop.

"Hey, man. Look ahead."

Cole did and saw quite a few civilians in front of aggressive-looking riot cops.

"**Stampton Bridge! Fastest way outta town. Just gotta get us past those baton-wielding goons", **said Zeke.

Cole turned to him. "**We're getting outta here. One way or another.**"

He turned back to the bridge.

"**Follow my lead.**"

**A/N: Sorry, but I had to do this. It occurred to me that I should've started smaller, like a "one shot" before making a full chapter story like with 12WW. I'll still be adding that adventure but this was more to help me find a…. 'system'. So, this is my official start. 'Who cares! What happened to Macy?' you might be saying. That little girl Cole met might have an important role in future events.**

**T12WW will be updated 'soon'. I swear, TellTale made me hate that word. A lot.**


End file.
